The Theory of Alternate Universes
by hope.rose.dawnstar
Summary: Alex lives in a world similar to our own, but with some different laws of physics. And then, one day, she is thrown from one timeline to another, and two diverging storylines are pulled closely together again. The current plan is for this to be a series, with book one mostly being stuff that happens before that. Setup for the big moment at the end and the next book or two.
1. Introduction

_**If, for whatever reason, you think I own Minecraft, think again. If you still think I own it after that, you may require someone else to do your thinking for you.**_

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Every time something happens that could have happened differently, every time someone makes a decision, a new universe branches off of our timeline.

Some people say that the other universes are just possibilities, could-have-beens. That they are only real in our imaginations.  
Others say that each time someone in our timeline imagines an alternate universe for the first time, it becomes real. That those other real universes can become… ' _solid_...' if others believe in them, but are forever out of reach.

I know first hand that this is not the case.

 _Some_ possibilities will likely remain forever unexplored by humanity. _Some_ worlds will likely never come into contact with this one.  
But a large number of them _do_.  
Every time you read a book, every time you watch a movie, every time you play a video game, you are interacting with another subset of reality.

Every one of those alternate universes is just as real and just as important as this one.  
Just as real and just as important as ours.

Or I suppose, really, I should say, as yours and as mine.

You see, I am not from this reality.

Before you call the nice people in white suits to take away the crazy person, or write this off as the work of a dedicated storyteller, allow me to explain.

I am from what you would call "Minecraft."  
Does the reddish blonde hair look familiar now? Do the bright green eyes? The leather pants and gray boots?

You would know me as Alex, if at all.  
You do know of me? Good. That will make this so much easier.

My name is Alexandra Areh *****. This is my story.

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 _ **Just to let you know, chapter 2 is in the works right now, and it'll be less philosophy and more practical story. So be on the lookout for that.  
**_ _ **I cannot promise that it will be posted anytime soon. I will try, though.**_

 _ *****_ _ **There is**_ _ **a pattern to some of the names I use.**_ _ **I changed Alex's last name, the one she formerly had will be used for somebody else because I realized it would be more fitting for that person. This will be explained a bit more when chapter 3 is posted.**_


	2. Choosing a School

_**Thank you to the guest who reviewed my story, I hope to keep the rest of the story just as interesting although I'm guessing my normal writer's block will return soon and put a stop to that. Luckily my writers block tends to leave me able to come up with lots of ideas but not properly write them into a story, so I can just save the ideas for when my brain is willing to write.**_

 _ **Please note that I still do not own Minecraft.**_

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"Alex, come on! We've got to get to the library in 15 strokes ***** to meet with Tasha!"

"And the library door is exactly 10 blocks ****** away from ours. How long can it _possibly_ take us to walk that far?"

Alexandra didn't see why her mom was always in such a rush. The village was only about sixty blocks in each direction, and they only needed to worry about monsters at night. What possible reason could she have to rush around like that?

Not understanding this wasn't the only way Alex was weird. She'd been born with a tiny little nub of a nose that was barely visible, and she resisted all attempts her dad made to apprentice her to the others in the village.

"I want to create my own trade," she would say. Her dad would just sigh, and hope that she'd grow out of it by the time she got through school.

But she wouldn't wind up going to school at all if they didn't get to the library in time, and Alex wanted to learn. So she followed her mom over, even though she was sure they'd be ridiculously early.

And they had to wait for about twelve strokes for Natasha, the librarian in charge of schooling. By the time Tasha arrived, Alex was bored out of her mind.

"Hello, Natasha," Alex's mom greeted.

"Hello, Fiona," Tasha replied. "Hi, Alex."

"Hi," said Alex.

Tasha had Alex do a couple of tests to see what she knew and what her learning style was.

"Okay, it looks like the best school for Alex is probably the one over in Westmore Savannah Village. That means she'll need to travel a bit further than most kids, and you might want to have her stay at school during the week," Tasha recommended to Alex's mom.

"Probably a good idea," Alex's mom agreed. "She'd never be able to get there in time otherwise."

Alex tuned out the ensuing discussion about the arrangements they'd need to make for it to work.

Eventually, Fiona and Alex said their goodbyes to Tasha and walked the ten blocks back to their house.

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 _ *** A tick is the moment-to-moment measure of time in the Minecraft world, essentially the equivalent of a second. 50 of them make a stroke, 20 strokes make a tap, and 24 taps make up a day, just like for us 24 hours is a day.**_

 _ **** A block, as you likely already know, is the main unit to measure distance in Minecraft, perhaps the equivalent of a yard or a meter. There are 16 pixels in a block. A length of 16 blocks is a chunk.**_

 _ **This may not seem particularly important; however please note that it is setup for something that will be important, involving the introduction of another major character, nearly as crucial to the story as Alex. And I may also use it as an excuse to introduce a third important character.**_


	3. A Porky Steed

_**Thank you to Laner for reviewing, it makes me giddily excited to see a new review and yours had the added bonus of not just saying 'good job' but also saying why you liked the story.  
I'm glad that you liked the scientific/philosophical atmosphere, because there's no way any (vaguely good) story I wrote could ever lack a sciency/sci-fi tone even if I tried, and a pondering philosophical state of mind is essential to this particular story. Although there probably won't be much of that in the normal chapters that make up most of the story. **_

_**Thank you to**_ _ **xEnderAwesomex**_ _ **as well, for much the same reason.  
O**_ _ **f course it's accurate! I try not to write inaccurate things. So even though the stories I write are technically fictional, they are at the very least accurate to the universe/dimension/reality that they are set in. And then this idea of the alternate histories being as real as ours, I truly believe in it, too. Although not so much the part about the different histories being linked; sure there's some reality where things turned out like Minecraft, but I don't actually think Minecraft is a link to it.**_

 _ **Something amusing I have noted: Markus Persson - Mark As Person (the really amusing thing is that Google spellcheck wants to change Mark As to Marcus and Person to Persson. It agrees! [Although that could be something in the spellcheck code telling it to try to keep things consistent, I don't really know.]) And a notch is a type of mark, so: Markus Persson → Mark As Person → Mark → Notch. I highly doubt that's the actual reason Markus is Notch, but you never know, it could be.**_

 _ **I have not gained ownership of Minecraft since the last chapter was posted.**_

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Alex woke up and popped out of bed.

 _I'm getting my own pig today!_ she cheered to herself.

She raced to the kitchen. Her mom was preparing breakfast, which was bread and porkchops.

Alex grabbed a bucket of milk and sat down at the table. She squirmed on her stool, too excited to stay still.

Her mom pulled a porkchop from the furnace and set it on a paper mat on the table in front of Alex.

"Thanks, Mom." Alex began eating as her mom set a bowl of bread on the table.

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"Which pig would you like?" asked Alex's dad.

"That one!" Alex exclaimed, pointing towards a pig that was investigating a dandelion flower. Her dad tossed her a lead.

Alex walked over to the pig and slipped the lead on.

"Now let's go get you a saddle for your pig."

Alex followed her dad to the leatherworker's shop, her pig trailing behind. They picked out a saddle and grabbed a nametag for her new steed. Alex named her pig Eadius.

After that, they returned home, and put Eadius in the back yard with the horses belonging to Alex's mom and dad.

"There's one last thing you'll need," Alex's dad stated.

"A carrot on a stick," Alex said.

"Yes. Now, why don't you go gather some sticks and grab some carrots from the garden, and your mom and I will show you how to make one."

Alex ran off in a hurry. Chuckling to himself about his daughter's youthful energy, her dad went back inside the house. He chatted idly with his wife as they waited for Alex to return.

A few strokes later, Alex returned. She set a pile of sticks and carrots down on the table, then looked to her parents for instruction.

Alex's mom showed her how to fasten sticks together to form a handle, while Alex's dad grabbed a handful of string from a chest in the corner.

"Good job, Alex," Alex's mom congratulated when her daughter successfully crafted three sticks smoothly together. Turning towards her husband, she added, "Jake, why don't you help her string it and attach a carrot?"

Alex's dad nodded. As Fiona wandered off to do something else, he selected four strings from his hand and set two of them on the table for Alex. Stowing the rest away in his pocket, he showed Alex how to tie two strings together so securely and with such a tiny knot that they seemed to be just one long string. Alex struggled with that, but her knot was strong enough and she would get better at it with practice.

The next step was to attach the string to the handle. Jake grabbed the one his wife had left on the table, and used his pocketknife to bore a small hole in one end. Alex followed his example, and soon they had looped their strings through the holes and tied them firmly in pace.

Finally, they tied the other ends of their strings to carrots. With two carrots on sticks, they went back outside to Eadius.

Alex's dad instructed her in how to put Eadius's saddle on. After that, they went back inside for lunch.

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Two weeks later, Alex left her home town on a journey to the village of Westmore Savannah. She had with her Eadius, a saddle, a carrot on a stick, a crafting table, thirty sticks, twenty lengths of string, ten carrots, twelve baked potatoes, and a diary.

It was her second trip to Westmore Village, the first having been with her parents. They'd arranged for her to stay with a man Alex's mom had gone to school with, a butcher named Oliver. As soon as Alex arrived at the village, she would head to his house.

It took Alex most of two taps to reach the edge of the savannah, and another ten strokes to travel across it to the village and locate Oliver's house.

Tomorrow, she would start school.

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 _ **I've gone back and changed Alex's last name, so I can use her former name for Steve later in the story. It doesn't really matter, but because of the method that I used to come up with the last name originally, I felt like it would be easier to come up with a new one for Alex than a new one for Steve. Although… no, the other character I plan to introduce with Steve doesn't screw that up. Not as far as I know, at least…**_


	4. A Glimpse of the Past

_**I am working on shortening my author's notes and so from now on only guest reviews will be answered in the chapters. The other responses will be through PMs.**_

 _ **This little section of story is set approximately 2 years before what we have seen so far with Alexandra. It follows two other characters who will be nearly as important, and a third who I am not yet entirely sure about. And I am really proud of this section, you'll see why if you compare it to the horrible trash that is the previous chapter.**_

 _ **Minecraft is owned by Mojang, Mojang is owned by Microsoft, and I do not own Microsoft.**_

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Steve ran after his brother, the bright green grass soft beneath his feet. Following closely behind him was a girl only about twelve days younger than the twin boys. The kids raced across the patch of lawn towards a stone building.

Steve heard his younger friend's footsteps slowing, almost to a halt, as they curved to run alongside the old house.

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Ahead of Jacqueline, the boys were about to run under a large balcony. It didn't look stable, and Jacquie was afraid that it might-

"Brian, Steve, stop!" she yelled as the overhanging structure started to crumble. The boys, who were already under the balcony, heard her agitated voice and the grating of the stone as it began to slip downwards. They desperately backpedalled a few steps, but weren't able to get a safe distance away before the structure came fully under the influence of gravity. The girl thought she would burst from the tension of the moments as she watched to see whether her friends would be okay.

The boys were not crushed, luckily. It was close, though. Jacquie could see that their toes were only pixels from the main mass of stone as it struck the ground. In an instant, the rocky balcony shattered, into chunks of various sizes- the bigger ones, two or three blocks large, dug into the grass-covered soil, the smaller pebbles bounced in various directions, and a cloud of dust filled the air.

Each boy was struck in the nose by one of the flying shards as they continued their frantic movement backwards. They both sent out wails of pain, and one of them screeched even louder as his eyes were filled with powdered rock.

But they were alive, and generally well, when either could have been dead, or crippled for life, if they had been one block further when the structure collapsed. Even at the age of two and a half, Jacquie realised that.

After a moment, she decided to go get an adult to help.

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 _ **Sorry if they aren't the most realistic two-and-a-half year olds. It's Minecraft, though, remember that. A whole 'nother world with a whole different time system. Maybe they have days and years like us, but that doesn't mean that days and years there are equivalent in time to days and years here.**_


	5. A Glimpse of the Past: Part Two

_**Important: I am posting this bit as three separate, short chapters, for emphasis. The third section is not yet written, but the first two are and I'm posting them together.** **This is part 2, read the previous chapter before this!**_

 _ **I am not an owner or developer of Minecraft. I absolutely do not claim it as my own.**_

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Brian sat with his twin in the house belonging to the doctor that their small town was lucky enough to have. His nose and eyes hurt like he'd visited the Nether, and he was sobbing. He was looking towards his lap, because he had no reason to look elsewhere. Even less so than normal.

The doctor was mixing up something in a glass bottle. Brian's eyes wouldn't let him see much at the moment, but he could hear the distinctive clinks of a stick against glass.

The clinks were slowly becoming muffled by whatever was being stirred. Eventually, they stopped, but it didn't sound like they faded out. Rather, it seemed that the doctor was done mixing it.

Footsteps. Brian could hear footsteps headed towards him. He looked up to see the dark, blurry, pinkish-purple form that was the doctor growing steadily larger as it approached him.

And then the doctor's voice said, "Could you keep your eyes open wide for a moment while I put this healing solution in them?"

Brian tried to, but at the last second he instinctively closed the tightly shut. So the doctor tried again, and this time held the lids of one eye in place as he applied the mixture. It was a paste that stung Brian's eye, but his eyes were already in enough pain that it didn't really make any difference. Still, he had extra trouble being helpful when the doctor went to apply the paste to his other eye.

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Steve watched his brother wince in pain as the doctor applied a mysterious concoction to his eyes. Steve's own nose was surely as mangled-looking as Brian's, and it certainly hurt ten times worse than anything he had felt before, but he knew his twin had the worse end of it. Not just the nose, which Steven saw looking closer was still leaking blood, but the eyes as well. Steve didn't particularly trust the doctor's skills after a bout of sickness he'd had earlier in the year, and he was not sure that Brian's eyes would ever be the same, looking at it them from this angle.

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 _ **Thanks for the suggestion, Laner. I already know how I'm going to incorporate it. Unfortunately it can't come until later in the story, and it's the section in between that I'm having trouble writing. And yes, I automatically double-check my math work and stuff, so it's expected to be correct. Of course, I do still manage to make silly mistakes in math class, but this is simple stuff which means I don't concentrate on the difficult parts and completely overlook the small things. :)**_


	6. A Glimpse of the Past: Part Three

**_Minecraft does not belong to me or anyone closely associated with me._**

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Jacqueline was desperate to check up on her friends. She practically dragged her mom to the doctor's house.

Her mom pulled open the door and the two of them stepped inside.

The doctor noted the small girl, about the size of his two patients, and asked, "Are you here to see the Keerg twins?"

"We are," confirmed Jacquie's mom.

"I had to do some surgery on their noses, since they were so badly smashed. They are currently recovering from it, and should be asleep," he gestured towards a closed door, "in that room over there. Try not to disturb their rest."

Jacquie sped over to the door and pulled it open. She held it for her mom, who lifted a finger to her lips in a shushing motion as she followed, but it was clear that the little girl was tempted to just run in and see how the boys were doing.

The brothers were laying on their backs on adjacent beds, their faces bound with woolen bandages. On one boy, the bandages only half covered the eyes. On the other, the bandages went way up past the eyes.

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When Brian woke up, his eyes and nose felt weird, and were covered with some sort of cloth, so he couldn't see. He slowly sat up.

"You're awake!" exclaimed an excited voice. It sounded like Jacqueline.

"Hold on a moment, I'm going to go get the doctor and see if we can take off your bandages yet," said an older woman, probably Jacquie's mom.

Brian heard footsteps moving away from him, and then the door opening and closing. A minute later, it opened again, and let in two sets of footsteps.

"Let me take a look," the doctor said, stopping right by Brian. He fiddled with the cloth a bit, peeking under it, and then gently tugged it off.

The first thing Brian noticed as he became able to see again was that everything was blurry.

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The doctor removed Brian's bandages, and the boy stared ahead for a moment, then turned and looked at Jacquie.

His eyes, once the same dark blue as Steve's, had been bleached a nearly pure white.

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 _ **To some extent, Steve's lack of confidence in the doctor was foreshadowing. I would have pointed it out earlier, but that would have been a spoiler, and I'd rather not give you spoilers when I can give you an actual chapter instead. But I'm sure by now you've figured out where this is headed (xEnderAwesomex definitely already did) so I can confirm that, yes, Brian is going to become the legendary terror known as Herobrine. I have it all planned out in my head, along with a million other things. Or more like twenty other things, but still.**_


	7. Our Characters Come Together

_**Something I forgot to mention last chapter: Brian no longer has a nose, just a scar where it used to be. The same is true for Steve, although the way I was planning to write the previous chapter, we would only know for sure that Brian's nose was gone.**_

 _ **I have a week off from school, and my only homework is something self-assigned for art, which will only take a minute or two. So my goal is to post a chapter a day. Of course, I never said it specifically had to be a chapter of this story, and I have all sorts of ideas, so I've got something up on Wattpad where I can add pictures, and there may be more stories appearing either there or here. If you want to check out what I've got up on Wattpad, my username there is HopeRoseDawnfire.**_

 _ **I still do not own Minecraft.**_

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"Alex, it's time for you to get up," Oliver said.

The little girl blinked blearily up at him and sat up in bed.

"Good morning, Oli-" her greeting was cut off by a yawn.

"Good morning, Alex. Now, why don't you get yourself ready for school, and I'll have breakfast waiting for you when you come out," Oliver told her, and then left the room.

Alexandra grabbed her brown tunic and grey boots from the chest beside her bed. She pulled them on, then turned back to the chest, gathering up a couple of things she thought she might want at school: her diary, a bit of ink and a quill to draw in it with (since she didn't know how to write yet), a pale green cap she put on immediately, and a dried poppy just because it was pretty. Stuffing the stuff in a bag, she walked out to join Oliver.

As Alex entered the room, she saw Oliver cutting a watermelon at the table. He pointed her towards a chair, and as she sat down he set a slice of melon on the table in front of her, along with the pumpkin pie that was already there.

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Steve, Brian, and Jacquie were the first kids in the classroom. This was because the woman taking care of them while they were in Westmore was worried that Brian would have trouble getting to school with his blurry eyesight, and so had made them leave early. Brian's blurry vision did not wind up slowing them down at all, and so they had arrived early as well.

They waited for a while, the twins sitting and talking to each other and Jacquie chatting with the teacher. Eventually, other kids started arriving. The looks on most of their faces, when they saw the brothers' scars where their noses should be and Brian's white eyes, weren't particularly nice. Steve hoped somebody would be friendlier.

There! The girl who had just come in got a look of pity, rather than disgust, when she saw Steve and Brian. Her nose was weirdly tiny, and she was getting some of the same looks that Steve and Brian were. When she noticed her face grew confused. Since nobody else seemed friendly, she wandered over to join Steve, Brian, and Jacquie.

"Hi," she said, "I'm Alex. Who are you?"

"I'm Steve," Steve gestured at Brian, "and this is my twin."

"I'm Brian," his brother added.

"And I'm their friend Jacqueline." Jacquie smiled at the other girl.

The girl- Alex, her name was Alex- smiled back, then switched to a more serious expression, and asked, "What happened to your noses and Brian's eyes?"

"A balcony collapsed onto us a couple years ago," Brian explained. "Jacquie warned us, but we weren't able to escape it entirely. Chunks of stone hit both of us in the nose, and my eyes got filled with dust. And then the doctor wasn't very helpful. We probably would have been fine given time to heal, but he decided to remove our noses, and put something on my eyes that made them turn white and turned my vision permanently blurry."

Alex nodded, saying "Yeah, that doesn't sound like a very helpful doctor."

"I didn't trust him much before that, and I haven't trusted him at all since," Steve added. "Brian and me try to keep from getting hurt or sick so we don't have to go see him."

After that, the conversation turned to less serious things, until class started.

"Hello, students," the teacher said once she had their attention. "I'm Teagan Laron. Please call me Teagan or Teacher. Today we'll be getting to know each other a bit, and then tomorrow we will start learning."

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 _ **Yes, I know "Brian and me" should really be "Brian and I." I wrote the mistake in there on purpose, I mean it's their first ever day of school, they can't possibly all have perfect grammar.**_

 _ **A response to Laner's latest review: It is indeed a new twist to Herobrine's story, and what I have planned for the progression (in mindset, he's already pretty much Herobrine in looks) from Brian to Herobrine is, I think, fairly unique as well. I'm glad you also think my story is original, there are such a lot of Minecraft fanfics out there and it feels good knowing that I'm not just creating another version of a cliche. Thank you.**_


	8. Bullies Join The Mix

_**Insert Disclaimer Here**_

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"Today we'll be getting to know each other a bit, and then tomorrow we will start learning," the teacher told them.

She was nice enough, but most of the students were still giving Alex, Brian, and Steve dirty looks. And since Jacqueline had made it clear that she was friends with them, she was starting to notice herself getting the same sort of negative attention. Under Teagan's watchful eye, nothing more than glances would happen, but… Jacquie was getting the same sort of feeling she had a few years ago right before that balcony collapsed on the boys. This worried her.

Teagan had them stand in a circle and toss around a ball. Each time somebody received the ball they had to say their name and the name of the person who had thrown it to them. The point of this was to help the class learn each other's names.

At one point, Teagan left the classroom because she needed to go help another teacher, who was still fairly new to teaching kids. She asked them to sit quietly in their circle while she was gone, but almost as soon as the door closed behind her, the boy who had the ball stood back up and tossed it- no, the word 'toss' implies a slow and gentle arc- threw the ball, hard, at Steve. Brian, who was just a little over in the circle, jumped in front of it. It hit him in the arm, and bounced off. While Brian clutched his arm, another kid grabbed the ball and lobbed it right at Alex. The class spent the rest of the time while the teacher was gone bombarding Steve, Alex, and Brian with painfully hard hits. They hit Jacquie a couple of times, too, but more because she tried to shield Alex than anything else.

When Teagan got back, she was clearly disappointed in the kids. She brought Alex, Steve, Brian, and Jacquie to sit up in the front, and said she wanted to talk with everyone else after school. So after that first day, the other kids generally kept from doing anything in class, but that didn't stop them outside of it.

At lunch the second day of school, a boy came up to Jacquie and asked if she wanted to join him and "get away from those freaks." Jacquie, of course, was offended; two of 'those freaks' were her best friends, and had been for as long as she could remember. She told him this, and he smacked her face and walked away.

Turning to Alex and the boys, who had witnessed the scene from a couple feet away, Jacqueline told them, "He is a mean liar." They all exclaimed their agreement.

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 _From that point on, the bullies treated Jacquie just as harshly as us three 'noseless freaks.' The first year or so, it was mostly just name-calling and the occasional tripping, but as we got older it got worse, to the point where eventually they were shoving us around or hitting us nearly every day._

 _Now, if you were in our situation, you'd probably wind up telling an adult about it. But you were raised in a very different society than us, one where there are school assemblies nearly every year about what bullying is and how to deal with it. We weren't, and we believed those mean kids when they told us that the only thing telling an adult would do is make them hit us harder._

 _After all, the adults were never around when the bullies came after us, so what could they possibly do to stop it? The only thing we could think of was sending us to a different school. And the kids elsewhere wouldn't necessarily be any nicer. Besides, what if they decided to split us up?_

 _Steve and Brian, being siblings, were going to wind up together either way, but even though Jacquie was practically their sister, she had no guarantees. And then I wasn't even from the same town; I was the only kid from my village which made those three my first, and only, friends, and I couldn't stand to lose them. Having a common enemy tends to help people bond fast, so they felt much the same way about me. Plus their town wasn't much bigger than mine, and the only reason there were as many as three kids in it was that one happened to turn out as two twins instead of a single baby. So they knew, to some extent, what it was like to be lonely, and didn't want to risk me being sentenced back to that fate._

 _Since we couldn't tell the adults, we endured the best we could._

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Steve's brother tended to get defensive of him. On one hand, Steve was grateful for this, and on the other hand, he wished Brian wouldn't keep putting himself in harm's way.

On this particular occasion, one of the main bullies, a boy named Jim, was headed towards Steve with a murderous look on his face. Brian stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

"Come to defend your twin, _Brine_?" Jim taunted.

Crossing his arms, Brian replied with a simple "Yes." But his voice was quavering, and Steve was sure that there must be hurt in his eyes from the new name he'd been called; there always was, whenever they came up with something new.

"Well, what'cha gonna do?" questioned Jim, in a mocking tone. " _You_ managing to hurt _me_ , that's a joke." And he promptly slammed his fist into Brian's face. Steve winced, then shrunk back as their tormentor continued past Brian towards him.

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 _ **Remember the 'insert disclaimer' thing at the top? I hope you guys got a good laugh out of it, but here's the actual disclaimer: I do not own Minecraft.**_

 _ **Also, you may have noticed that for a while I went back to the italics like in the introduction; this is because I was having trouble writing an in-the-moment description of the events. It took me a while, but I came up with a way to get around it without skipping any crucial moments: I had Alex summarize them as a bridge to the next section, which I found to be much easier. Unfortunately, it also meant less opportunities for descriptive language, and I'm already not as good at spotting those opportunities as I'd like to be. If it seems a bit lacking, that would be why.**_

 _ **Also, just to clarify- where Alex says that Jacquie and the twins were "my first, and only, friends," she means they were her only friends at the time. She may or may not gain more friends later in the story. I already know, but you'll have to wait and see.**_


	9. Something Involving Iron and Obsidian

**_I think the "_** p dir="ltr" style="line-height: _ **" thing happened because I tried to post at school on a day when the wifi was particularly bad. Or maybe it was because I copy-pasted it instead of downloading the document to my computer and then uploading it to the site. Either way, it's a good thing I write the chapters on Google Docs because I can quickly fix the chapter.**_

 ** _Here's the chapter (and original author's notes):_**

I apologize for taking so long to write this chapter. I just lost inspiration for a while. I had all these ideas and parts of the plot floating around in my head, but I just couldn't form it into coherent sentences.

Notes on time (I already explained the tick/stroke/tap thing, but not larger units of time such as weeks) in Alex's world can be found at the end of this chapter.

I have not at any time owned the video game formerly known as Cave Game.

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'Well, what'cha gonna do?'

The words rang through Brian's brain. Though said in a taunting tone, intended to bring him down, they instead pushed him to do better.

He sat, and he thought of things he could improve on, things he could do to stop the mean kids from hurting his brother and his friends.

Eventually, Brian came up with something he could start on right away.

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One night, Steve woke up and found Brian's bed empty. He climbed out of his own bed, pulling his shoes on, before leaving the room in search of his brother.

He wandered from room to room, finally checking the basement. As he opened the door, Steve saw a gentle light spilling up from the bottom of the stairs. He walked down the stairway, and when he turned at the foot of the stairs to look into the main room of the basement, his eyes found something he had not expected.

His twin stood in the room, facing away from him and holding an object in each hand. He was clearly clearly struggling to keep them up.

Somehow, Brian had gotten ahold of a large collection of heavy blocks. Stacked in the corner opposite the staircase were iron blocks, anvils, and even some obsidian.

Brian was currently holding two iron blocks, and he seemed barely able to lift them. He surely couldn't have brought all these things in by himself. Maybe he'd asked Benita- no, that would be skirting the edges of their agreement to not tell the adults. Their current caretaker would surely have questioned why Brian wanted the blocks. And if Benita knew Brian had them, she probably would have told Steve. So maybe the stash had already been there, and Brian had stumbled upon it while looking for something else?

As Steve pulled himself out of his thoughts, Brian finally lost his grip on the iron. The blocks fell from his hands. One dropped straight down to clatter on the floor, but the other bonked Brian's leg on the way. He released a small pained sound.

"Are you okay?" questioned Steve. His brother gasped and jerked around quickly, too quickly with his newly injured leg. Brian fell to the floor.

"What are you doing out of bed?" he asked Steve.

"I should be asking you that question," Steve replied as he reached down and helped Brian up. "I was looking for you."

"You know how a while ago I tried to stop Jim and he said-"

"Yes," Steve interrupted, picking up on what his brother was saying the way only twins could. "I'm sure it wasn't intended, but he did essentially challenge you. So you're training?"

Brian only nodded.

"Well, be careful," Steve said, worried. "Don't hurt yourself. Maybe you should start with something not as heavy, like a couple axes."

"Maybe," Brian agreed. "This doesn't seem to be working too well."

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It was after school on the seventh day of the week, so Alex was preparing Eadius to ride home for the weekend. She lifted up the heavy saddle, becoming annoyed as Eadius scooted away from her in an effort to reach an apple that had fallen out of the small bowl of them Alex had given him.

"Eadius, come on," she grumbled. " Let me put on your saddle."

Alex tried again, and this time the pig didn't scooch away. As soon as Eadius finished munching on the fruit, she mounted, pulled a carrot on a stick from her pack, and guided her mount out of the pen. Waving goodbye to Oliver, who she'd recently nicknamed Olive, Alexandra began her journey back to her village.

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Considering how demo Minecraft works (and trust me, I know the PC demo way better than I'd like to) there are definitely days in Minecraft. That's not debatable. And it makes sense that they would have some way of organizing days, like we have weeks, months, and years. I've decided to keep the same names for these units of time, because it wouldn't make much sense for just days to have the same name as in our world. But a week is 10 days, and a month is 3 weeks. 3 weeks exactly, no weird months like we have that are different numbers of days. And a year is 12 months just like in our world. Why, you ask? The answer is: because. (AKA, I just want to do it that way.)


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